Rajya Sabha MP Dharmasthala Veerendra Heggade asked Minister of Labour and Employment Rameswar Teli on Thursday regarding the launch of the e-Shram portal for unorganised Workers.
In a written reply, the minister, Rameswar Teli, said that the Ministry of Labour and Employment launched the eShram portal on August 26, 2021, which is a National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW) aged between 16-59 and is Aadhaar seeded. A total of Rs. 704.01 crores was allocated for NDUW up to 2024–25, and funds to the tune of around Rs. 420 Crores have been utilised as of July 16, 2023. As per the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) proposal, the target of registration under eShram was 25 crore till 2024–25. As of July 16, 2023, the registration in eShram is almost 28.96 crore, which is about 4 crore more than the estimated targets. However, to further improve registration on eShram, the Ministry has taken several steps, such as organising registration camps and drives from time to time in coordination with Common Service Centres (CSC) and platform aggregators. Social media platforms are also used to spread awareness among workers about the need to register on e-Shram. State Seva Kendras (SSKs) and services of CSC’s were on board to facilitate assisted mode registrations of unorganised workers, including gig and platform workers.